With how strapped for cash many people are today because of inflation and the rising prices of basically everything, it might be time to start looking to the people who survived other hard financial times in order to learn some lessons from them. So if you’re needing to make some changes so that you can survive financially in the uncertain future, you may want to make a visit to your grandparents in their assisted living facility to ask them for some free advice.
If this isn’t something you can personally do, here are three basic financial lessons that you can learn from your grandparents and others of their generation.
Take Better Care Of The Belongings You Have
For the things that you are spending your precious funds on, one of the best things you can do is to take care of them.
In many cases, spending more money on a quality product is going to be better for you in the long run. However, if you don’t care for those items and maintain the quality and integrity well, you could be wasting your money on these items too. But if you take better care of the belongings you have and don’t view everything as disposable or replaceable, you’ll be able to make these financial investments more worthwhile and save yourself a lot of money along the way.
Use Credit With Extreme Care
Credit used to be something that not everyone took advantage of like they do today. And while having access to credit can be a great fail-safe for times when you need something that you simply don’t have the cash to afford, it’s wise for people to use credit with extreme care.
There are some things in your life that you’re going to have to go into debt for, like a home or a car. But in general, it’s going to be much better for you financially to avoid paying for things with credit if you can help it. Instead, try to use cash as much as possible to keep yourself from getting stuck under a mountain of debt that you can’t easily get out from underneath.
Don’t Instantly Buy What You Think You Want
Nowadays, people are used to being able to get whatever they want, whenever they want it. But when your grandparents were growing up, there were so many things that they didn’t have access to or that they had to wait in order to get. Because of this, they learned how to be more patient consumers than most people are now.
By delaying buying items that you want but don’t need, you can really think about whether or not it’s a good idea to spend your money on these things or to just save your money for something that you actually need.
To help you to live on better financial footing, consider using the advice mentioned above that your grandparents have been living by for decades.
Veeramachineni Lalitha
I am Finance Content Writer. I write Personal Finance, banking, investment, and insurance related content for top clients including Kotak Mahindra Bank, Edelweiss, ICICI BANK and IDFC FIRST Bank. My experience details : Linkedin